A
New Englander who married and moved to the ranching West, Waterston
grounds her writing in both of those cultural and geographic landscapes.
Her award-winning essays, short stories and poems have been published
in numerous journals and anthologies and reviews.
Ellen Waterston's collection of essays Where the Crooked River Rises
was published by OSU Press, Corvallis in September 2010. In this
compelling collection of personal essays, award-winning poet and author
Ellen Waterston illuminates the people, places and landscape of Central
Oregon's vast high desert. To read reviews and order your copy of the
book, click here.
In June 2010, her poem Designed to Fly was read by Garrison Keillor (click to listen!) on Writer's Almanac. She is the 2008 winner of the Oregon Quarterly Essay Competition, the 2007 recipient of the national Obsidian Prize in Poetry awarded by the High Desert Journal
and in 2007 was named an Honorary Distinguished Professor of Humane
Letters by Oregon State University/Cascades Campus for her
accomplishments in the literary arts.
Between Desert Seasons,
a collection of her poetry, published December 2008 by Wordcraft of
Oregon, was named the 2009 WILLA award winner. An earlier collection, I Am Madagascar won the WILLA Prize in Poetry in 2005. Her memoir, Then There Was No Mountain, Rowman and Littlefield publisher, was selected by the Oregonian
as one of the top ten books in 2003, was a national Foreword and WILLA
finalist, and earned her an appearance on Good Morning America with
Diane Sawyer. She is the author of two children’s books, Barney’s Joy and Tea At Miss Jean’s, Roberts Rinehart Publisher. Waterston is currently completing a novel.
In
2009, Waterston was awarded an Invidual Artist Fellowship. She received
the 2003 Special Literary Fellowship for Women Writers given by
Oregon’s Literary Arts, Inc. She is the recipient of nine writing
residency fellowships, including a Sitka Center for Art & Ecology
2010 and 2011, and the 2009 Island Institute Residency.
Waterston is the founder and director of The Nature of Words,
an annual literary event that brings nationally recognized authors and
poets for four days of readings, panel discussions, and workshops to
Bend, Oregon the first weekend of November. She is also the founder and
director of the Writing Ranch, offering workshops and retreats for
emerging writers and her Language Arts for Leaders© series addressing workplace writing and communication skills.
A
sought-after presenter, Waterston was the keynote speaker at Oregon
State University-Cascades, Oregon English Teachers Association, Oregon
Library Association, Oregon State Poetry Association, Trillium Family
Services and CASA (The National Center on Addiction and Substance
Abuse).
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